I never even knew this existed. Interesting Salon article.
In the 70’s, we called this “hookie”.
And be a complete failure when it comes to showing up to work on time, sitting through industrial training videos, going to classes when they do get to college…
Imagine if you unschooled indigo children!
I love this approach. It’s totally doable and from what I know of different education philosophies it can produce some of the most self-fulfilled and confident adults possible. Trouble is, it takes the dedication of the parents, and the parents have to have a clue, not just hippies who have a hard on against The System.
I’ve known some parents who could pull this off with stellar results, but most of the people I know would just produce fucked up idiot adults. It’s a loaded gun that can do a lot of harm to innocent children. Learning the core academics like reading/writing & math is really no problem. I watched my oldest child (nontraditional schooling) enter the summer having a good grasp of the alphabet but not being able to read, and barely being able to do single digit addition; to ripping through the Laura Ingalls Wilder series and doing large number multiplication. She got bored and asked us how to do it so we spent about an hour a day with her for about a month and then let her fly & build on what she learned. The trick is to allow the kids to WANT to learn. And there is so much in the traditional system that kills that desire.
It seems to me that some people do this really really well, and others just don’t. I think it takes the right kind of family and the right kind of kid. I’ve seen some stellar kids grow up this way, though.
Unschoolers vary in their approaches–most, for example, do have their kids in a formal math program, since relatively few kids get excited about math on their own.
I was gonna let it go until you put in that bit about indigos. I’m not sure if I buy all the fluffy trappings of the colored kids…uh…system, but I will admit that my son is quite neatly described in the indigo profile. This system would totally rule for him, but the parent would indeed have to provide a rigid structure based on the indigo’s priorities. And since the indigo is just a not-yet-recognized ruler of the known universe, it would be easy enough to demonstrate why certain elements of learning and socialization should be mastered. 
He’s a trip, but I’ve got his number.
You’re missing something here: if done correctly, the kid won’t NEED to kowtow to the external structure, he’ll be imposing his own on all the trained sheep produced by the system. Besides, I’ve known enough “schooled” kids that can’t be counted on to show up on time and sit still for training & education. I’m not seeing how the traditional system is serving the kids any better than no system at all. Except to produce image-oriented consumers.
I’m not clear on how this happens. Short of him inheriting lots of money, developing near omnipotent mental powers, or coming to work with a sawed off shotgun, how is this imposition of his structure on the “system” going to happen?
Hypnotism.
Because, you know, the kid will be all “powerful” and stuff. Without actually studying business or anything, he/she will intuit more about the world of trade than the accumulated wisdom of a thousand generations of commerce. This will enable the child to show up at his job at Wendy’s, look around a bit, and immediately display such brilliance that he will be running the joint in about fifteen minutes. And everyone knows that when you’re in charge, you can show up whenever you want; employees have such respect for the office that they just laugh it off if The Man slouches in at noon, muttering, “my aura needed sleep.” It just inspires them to work harder.
Ripley: “This little girl survived longer than that with no weapons and no training.”
Hudson: “So why don’t you put her in charge?”
Step 1: Don’t go to school
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit, and domination of The System!
In a nutshell, I “unschooled” myself. The result at 16 was a full-time job, doing what I loved to do, for $20 an hour. I’m now in the college I want to be at, persuing the degree I want, paying for it myself, and working when I want to. I’ll be starting up a small business next year, but if that doesn’t work out, I’ll be contracting - or working a typical job, but only under my terms.
I wonder what all that time my friends spent in school went toward. I went from a junior-high education to being a junior in college in 4 years, and for the 4 years I spent goofing off, I gained a lot of priceless experience.
Of course, this has little to do with going to school or not. I am entirely responsible for how my education develops - and how I use it - just like everyone else.
I’m sure this is a corollary to Gaudere’s Law of some sort - exhibiting a lack of intelligence while flaunting it…
Like TonyF i also chose to “unschool” myself. The education system was doing nothing for me - i had to sit through lessons where i understood nothing and did not forsee myself ever using (had i been able to understand) the skills taught. In the areas that interested me i was way ahead of what was being taught. It was lose-lose.
So i took myself out of school and since age 14 have been responsible for my own education. I wasn’t goofing off though. I was learning what i wanted to. I now have two degrees and a bunch of other qualifications. And these are all qualifications i am *interested * in rather than whatever the educators of my youth felt i should learn. It was tough going against the system that way but i’m happy that i did. My life feels much more under my control and i am doing things i want to do in terms of employment.
Sounds a bit like Summerhill which was set up in the early 20th century.
I read a lot of AS Neill’s work when I was training to teach, and to be honest it really does make a lot of sense. How many of us rally against the system all through school, perhaps with a sense of not-belonging, or not fitting in with either the other kids or the teachers? Summerhill philosophy allowed children to be themselves, to organise themselves socially and learn what and when they wanted. Standard pattern, as I remember, is kids coming in, going wild for a couple of months, getting bored with the ‘freedom’ and conforming to a general structure anyway. The difference is that they were allowed to be individual with it, instead of being tied up by petty rules and regulations.
That approach is pretty much what I, and many of my friends did, when we first got away from school and went to college or university. My guess is that most of the Summerhill kids grew up socially and intellectually a lot quicker than I did as a result.
The first unschoolers were indeed inspired by Summerhill. John Holt set up something similar.
Some of you seem to be under the impression that unschoolers just goof off and don’t learn anything. That is not so. Unschoolers are supposed to be learning a lot, just not in the way the school system wants them to. They get to focus on their passion for several hours a day. A girl interested in being a vet will have an internship at an animal hospital and study all the sciences, or whatever. A writer will get to spend large chunks of time reading and writing. They get mentors and apprenticeships and whatnot. They can move at your own pace and skim all the pointless, redundant work schoolkids complain about, while focusing on their interests. Unschoolers generally, AFAIK, get interested and start working seriously on a life goal much younger than schooled kids–because they can, and they haven’t been squished into a box, as many of you complain that school does.
I’m a homeschooler, and unschooling is definitely not for me, but there’s a lot to be said for it when it’s done well.
As part of learninghow to teach children, my step-sister brought this book about unschooling home from the library. I read a good chunk of it before she had to return it, and was favorably impressed. It sounds questionable at first, but I think it could work really well, provided the parents put enough work into it. Without knowing a whole lot about either system, it strikes me as similar to the Montessori method, but on an individual basis.
As someone else noted, to be successful this system would seem to require intelligent and dedicated parents with fairly high levels of (conventional) education. The ultimate measure of this will be if an unschooled child can successfully become an effective “unschooled” teaching parent.
You snarky little dork. The unschooled don’t spend the day in front of the TV and honing their X-Box skills. Kids are naturally curious about stuff. Left to their own devices they’ll get into stuff, take stuff apart and in general feed their heads. Under some kind of guidance they can be introduced to stuff that will equip them to participate in society, but without the resentment for authority that is bred by traditional schools. The attitude is replaced by an integrated feeling of self-reliance and responsibility. If the kid ends up working at Wendy’s it’ll be because that is part of the path they have chosen. Maybe the path is the conquest of the Wendy’s corporate structure, or maybe Wendy’s is simply a convenient and adequate source of income to fund what the person really wants to do.
It’s hard to wrap your brain around sometimes, but some folks believe that life should be lived by and for the individual and not for the profit of an exploitive machine. The curricula currently on offer is based on pumping out worker bees and is a relic of the industrial revolution. Nuts to that!
That’s a big festering load of bullshit. People make their own choices in life, regardless of how they were educated. If someone wants to be a Tool of The Machine that’s their deal. Believe it or not, some people actually enjoy it. Traditional education isn’t everybody’s bag, baby, but it produces plenty of perfectly healthy functioning adults who are capable of running their own lives without becoming a Spineless Corporate Robot to be looked down upon by Enlightened Individuals such as yourself.
But don’t take my word for it. You keep fighting the good fight, stickin’ it to the man, and I’ll be over here, with my oppressive public school education, getting on with my life and not giving a shit.